


Echoes

by Nagaina



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-03-31
Updated: 2010-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-08 14:03:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When searching for the secrets one's own past, and one's own self, what you do not know is often what can hurt the most. Sequel to 'Ghosts of Memory.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Echoes of Lordaeron

_This was not quite how he imagined it happening._

Shadowglen's village church was just that -- a simple, one-room chapel of classic design, its walls of unadorned wood and plaster pierced here and there with windows of leaded glass, its floor milled stone covered in rough-hewn wooden planks, its pews simple backless benches crafted from the boles of trees halved and sanded smooth, the platform and pulpit lectern raised only a few inches off the floor. On holy-days and feast-days it would be just enough to serve the village's population; now, with Shadowglen's numbers swollen with desperate refugees from the Eastlands, it was inadequate for nearly anything beyond acting as a local operations coordination point, and that only barely. The pews were all pushed and stacked against the walls, for example, to make room for the camp table upon which was spread a map of all Lordaeron, covered in carved red and blue counters marking the relative positions of forces according to the most recent intelligence. This was also moved as far into a corner as it could be, given its size, to make the center of the room as much a proper aisle as it could be under the circumstances.

On each side of that aisle stood a rather harried-looking acolyte, clad in the nearest approximation of a formal white robe as could be managed on such short notice, holding a candle -- hour candles, he couldn't help noticing with something perilously close to hysterical amusement, burned half their length by the long nights spent at labor they were all presently enjoying. Under normal circumstances, there would have been at least a dozen, waving censers of incense, intoning the call and responsory prayers that were supposed to attend moments such as this, for the edification of both the audience and the celebrants. There was, in fact, no audience of any kind, for which he felt a strange, tangled reaction, half-relief (for he found the public ostentation so beloved of senior prelates and legates and other high Church officials of all stripes rather off-putting much of the time) and half-regret (for, he could not help but wonder, would his father and brother have bothered to make the journey from Quel'Thalas, even if the time had existed to summon them and a raging war with the dead not lay between? He doubted it, frankly, and wished that he could do otherwise). Nor were there the traditional, though not strictly required, ranks of witnesses drawn from the Order itself, the men and women who would shortly become his sword-kin, his comrades in arms. He was neither surprised nor disappointed by their absence -- nearly every blade and every hammer and every healer in the service of the Silver Hand was deployed in the field and he did not doubt that, were the situation not so desperate, the need for more of those skilled hands not so dire, he would not be standing in Shadowglen's chapel at all yet.

But he was, and High Legate Fairbanks, resplendent in the formal robes of his office, was standing at the lectern glaring down that intimidating beak of a nose with the book already open and waiting, flanked two to a side by the four knight-celebrants the ritual required. He advanced down the aisle, head high and eyes straight, acutely aware of the six days it had been since he'd addressed matters of personal grooming with more than a lick and a promise, much less changed clothes, the painful dryness of his throat, and the fact that he absolutely could not recall the proper order of the responsory vows he was about to swear no matter how hard he cudgeled his brain for the information. At Fairbanks' feet, he knelt and bowed his head, an expression he knew was quite some distance from properly serene and confident thankfully concealed behind the curtain of his own sun-golden hair.

Fairbanks had the sort of rich, melodious voice that would have made him beloved of any congregation in Lordaeron, and probably a few in Quel'Thalas: it filled the chapel and spilled out the cracked-open windows, drawing startled attention from passers-by outside. "In the Light, we gather to empower our brother. In its grace, he will be made anew. In its power, he shall educate the masses. In its strength, he shall combat the shadow. And in its wisdom, he shall lead his brethren to the eternal rewards of paradise."

He looked up in time to find Fairbanks laying the scriptural aside, taking up the blue stole and the small crystal ampule of holy oil, and offered the High Legate his hand to aid the step down from the altar platform. Fairbanks had, he thought, a reassuringly firm grip, though the Legate's expression remained stern as he draped the blue stole, stiff with silver embroidery, over his own neck and touched the tip of one slender finger, slick with the fragrant, blessed oil, to the very center of his forehead. "By the grace of the Light, may your brethren be healed. Knights of the Silver Hand, if you deem this man worthy, lay your blessings upon him."

He found that he knew all four of the knights gathered here, and also found that more than a little comforting; he rather doubted that they would hold it against him if he made an absolute fool of himself the moment he opened his mouth. Sir Tyrosus stepped forward, holding a long, slim bundle swathed in a length of blue silk, smiling as he commonly did with only one corner of his mouth. Not for the first time, he regretted that the field hospital had not been able to save that eye, though he appeared to be adapting well to the lack. Tyrosus knelt and laid the silk-wrapped bundle at his knees, opening it to reveal not the traditional warhammer -- or even a lighter mace -- but an unsheathed sword: long, slender, single-edged and chisel-tipped in the traditional Quel'dorei fashion -- more than the fashion, he realized, and caught his breath as he recognized the maker's-mark etched into the flat of the blade. Its hilt was wrapped in blue-dyed leather and its pommel carved in the shape of a warhammer's head. His master came forward next, but the plates Lord Mograine laid over his shoulders were not the heavy, ceremonial trappings but smooth, freshly oiled steel that perfectly fit the curves of muscle, the pauldrons of the field armor made to his own measurements, armor he guessed he would need sooner rather than later. Lord Mograine stepped back, a genuine smile, the first in many days, came to stay on his weary face. "By the strength of the Light, may your enemies be undone."

Fairbanks made the traditional gesture of benediction. "Arise and be recognized."

He gathered his sword into the crook of his arm and did so, trying to work enough moisture into his mouth to speak in something other than a croak.

"Do you, Solivar Eventide, vow to uphold the honor and the codes of the Order of the Silver Hand?"

He swallowed hard and murmured, rather more huskily than usual, "I do."

"Do you vow to walk in the grace of the Light and spread its wisdom to your fellow man?"

"I do." That came out better, as the hours they had all spent rehearsing this moment came rushing back all at once, bringing something like assurance with it. He wondered, for the briefest of instance, where Aretegos was -- none of them had doubted, for an instant, that he would be the first of their number to receive this honor, and it seemed strange, almost wrong, that he wasn't one of the knights attending...

"Do you vow to vanquish evil wherever it be found, and protect the innocent with your very life?"

"By my blood and honor, I do."

Legate Fairbanks smiled, a swift but true expression, and addressed the assembled acolytes and paladins. "Brothers and sisters, you who have gathered here to bear witness, raise your hands and let the Light illuminate this man."

It rolled over him swiftly, spilling forth from the upraised hands of his master, the brothers and sisters to whom he had just sworn his life and honor, winding around him in all-encompassing brilliance and warmth. In the instant the last days, the last weeks, were washed away, the weariness, the gnawing fear, the ache of half-healed injuries and wit-slowing weight of not enough sleep. In place of those things came peace and an intense inner stillness, a buoyant serenity he was certain he had never truly felt before that moment, the knowledge that, no matter what might come, his soul was forever wedded to this, to a beauty and grace and brightness greater than himself, greater than them all, that held the world and all its life and death in gentle, mighty hands. A pair of very warm, very real hands came to rest on his shoulders and he opened his eyes -- when had he closed them? -- to find his master's still-illuminated face a few inches from his own, pressing a father's kiss to his forehead, drawing him into a father's warm, tight embrace. His throat tightened almost unbearably and he closed his eyes again before the sudden tears welling there could embarrass them both.

"Well done," Lord Mograine murmured against his ear. "Were you my own I could not be more proud of you now."

"My Lord," He whispered in reply. "I will always be grateful for this, and for you, and for all you did to help me here."

"None of that. You did this, and the honor today is yours." His master stepped back, still holding his shoulders, and gave him a gentle shake. "Your first order, paladin, is to go forth and find Keldris and Talia for me. Drag them back by their ears if you must."

"As my Lord Commander wishes."

Solivar came back to himself covered in blood. This was, by itself, not a completely unusual occurrence: while the undead did not require _sleep_ as the living did, a certain amount of _rest_, of recuperation time, was necessary in order to maintain intellectual function, to avoid sliding into a state of mindless killing hunger that could not be broken, only appeased. Failure to seek that rest in some form -- quiet meditation, a well-worn physical ritual that required no thought to complete, something, anything -- inevitably had consequences. And, while icy control and vicious precision and utterly serene brutality had been the hallmarks of his personal service, he could not claim that he had never descended to the level of mindless slaughter, returning home to Naxxramas or Acherus mostly clad in the leavings of someone else's life.

He could not remember the last time he had truly rested and so he found himself, for the first time in a very long time, emerging from mindlessness with the blood splashed across his face and hands and hair and weapons still slightly tacky but more dry than not, slumped against a half-familiar half-not gray stone wall. And, rather more annoyingly, with the best part of a largish two-handed sword still transfixing his chest, having penetrated his armor along the weak point of one of the side seams. Gripping the bit of blade he could reach, he gave it an experimental tug and found it most firmly stuck, caught in the grip of bone and muscle and metal. Had he been able to fill his lungs enough for it, he would have uttered a sound of disgust and irritation; as it was, the best he could manage was a gurgly metallic wheeze and to heave himself awkwardly to his feet with the aid of a broken weapon rack. In the dim light of the single guttering torch he took stock: whatever other injuries he had suffered, beyond the most obvious and annoying, had repaired themselves and so he at least had no extra hindrances to his mobility to deal with. Looking about, he realized he was in one of the half-ruined towers that dotted Lordaeron's landscape like crushed toadstools, one that had seen some recent use, and a glance up showed him by whom: the banner of the Scarlet Crusade hung, sadly defiant, from the single intact ceiling support beam.

He had not been hacked into tartare while too senseless to adequately defend himself, which told him much about the situation. The fresher but still mostly-dried blood-trail across the tower's already deeply bloodstained floor told him even more and as he staggered outside into the misty chill of the Tirisfalen night, he found the owner of the sword, collapsed an impressive distance down the ramp given that Frozen Death was still jutting out of her back. It took a few hard tugs on the axe's handle to get the great, curved blade to come free, the rigor of the Scarlet worker-ant's corpse seeming almost reluctant to let it go, and a few more minutes to work up enough air to whistle for the deathcharger whose burning white hooves he saw further up the twilit, heavily overgrown hill. Moonshadow moved to join him in her own good time, taking the opportunity to browse amongst the red-clad corpses scattered whole and in pieces across the browned and dying heather, tearing a bit off here and there and chewing loudly in what he took to be an extremely reproachful manner. Planting the axe head down and leaning his weight on the haft, he reached out to her with a thread of the power that bound them together. _My most humble apologies for leaving you to your own devices for so long. Now spit that out before it gives you rabies._

The deathcharger dropped the gobbet of cartilage she had been gnawing on -- he suspected the remnants of an ear -- and blew a snort at him; for a moment, he swore he could feel something like _amusement_ flowing at him through the bond between them. Then her velvety nose touched his side and her tongue lapped at the fresh blood the exertion of simply getting up and walking had drawn and all appeared to be forgiven. She let him take hold of her reins and even lean some weight on her neck as he struggled into the saddle, kneeing her gently into motion. Moonshadow set her own course and traveled it at a mercifully slow, non-jarring pace given the state of the terrain while he clung to saddle with one hand and his axe with the other, and tried to put his mind back in order.

That was, to his frustration, no simple task. Darkness lurked at the edges of his being, surging in like a shadowy sea at high tide, flowing over his mind and washing bits and pieces of thought, fragments of memory, tantalizingly into and out of reach. Hour candles. He had absolutely no idea why his head should be full of the thought of hour candles, but it was. In his mind's eye a great stone wall loomed out of the rugged hills and needle-carpeted floor of a great evergreen forest, its gates lowered and barred against the miserable refugees who huddled hard by it for the illusion of safety it provided. Greymane Wall. He had ridden to the old border of Gilneas and Lordaeron, there to meet with...a brother. Several -- sword-kin of the Ebon Blade, and the Forsaken warrior whose path had crossed his own with startling regularity of late. He could not remember _why_ he had done so, or what had passed between them, but the sense of violent disquiet he had felt afterwards lingered strongly enough that he flinched away from examining it too closely, the darkness swimming behind his eyes threatening to drag him down again. For a moment it was all he could do to cling to his saddle and force himself to focus on things beyond himself: the sound of his deathcharger's hooves striking the ground, the rhythmic motion of her stride, the taste of the cold night air. Slowly, the shadows receded, taking with them the perturbation that threatened to completely undo his self-control -- and nearly everything else, as well. Except the damned hour candles.

Moonshadow's saronite-clad hooves struck stone and he looked up and about. The road was not one of the ruined, overgrown traces strewn across the Tirisfalen hills, marking the lost places where the living walked before the plague came to devour them, but a well-maintained thoroughfare, the verge trimmed back and the paving stones clearly maintained.

_"The highroad linking Brill and Shadowglen is clear of the dead and secure its length, but we will need more men to maintain that state of security. Moreover...if the Bulwark defenses are overrun...we will need reinforcements that will not have to fight their way to us from the Eastlands. I therefore propose..."_

He heard the voice as clearly as if the speaker were standing beside him, a voice he had known long and well, and the _pain_ of hearing it again now that its owner was lost was stunning. He jerked Moonshadow's reins more roughly than he meant, and sent her cantering south toward Brill, letting the nagging discomfort of the sword stuck through him drown out the sharper ache of hearing Alexandros Mograine's voice again. The ride was just far enough to render him completely physically wretched, making less easily manageable miseries fade thankfully into the background. Moonshadow slowed of her own recognizance as they approached the town limits, dropping from a canter to a slow jog and from there to a sedate walk, ignoring all instruction from his knees or the reins and made straight for the stable, where a visibly bored Forsaken hand lounged on the steps outside, the remnants of his teeth grinding lower still on the shoe-nail clenched between them.

Something deeply unpleasant came and went in his marshlight-yellow eyes, the remnants of his lips curling back in an expression that could not be called a smile by even the most imaginative. "Mounting block's around the side, sir knight. Do call if you need help."

Solivar was becoming rather inured to the lack of pleasantries among the vast bulk of the Forsaken, who seemed to find the existence of well-preserved -- or, at the very least, less obviously rotten -- undead to be a vast personal affront aimed directly at them by Arthas himself. Knowing as he did the Lich King's propensity for inflicting petty torments, they likely had a point about that, and so he bowed as best he could from the saddle in thanks. The mounting block did, in fact, make getting down considerably easier and the hand took Moonshadow's reins and silver enough to see her well cared for civilly and even pointed the way to the smithy without much noticeable condescension.

The smiths gave their names as Abe and Oliver and it took the combined powers of both of them, an enormous pair of tongs, and a considerable amount of heat applied directly to his armor around the point of penetration to actually get the sword removed. It came out in stages, with three separate hard jerks, and emerged smoking and pitted in a fountain of dark blood that struck the smithy floor with a hiss and crackle and immediately crumbled a good two feet of stone into mingled black and gray dust. His body, of course, began reordering itself at once, the contractions of reconnecting muscles and reorienting bones forcing involuntary sounds of discomfort out of his mouth along with quite a bit more blood from his ruptured lungs, adding to the ruination of the floor. Once he was recovered enough to speak, he rasped out, "Add the cost of your floor to my repair bill, if you would."

Abe Winters made no promises concerning the reparability of the armor given its punctured and now heat-warped state, but was more than willing to accept his pledge to pay for the floor and to point him in the direction of accommodations more pleasing than a bedroll in the stable loft. "The Gallow's End has rooms to let upstairs, sir knight, and unless you feel like taking your rest in a box propped against the wall you'll not find better even in the Undercity."

He had passed through Brill some weeks before and had, in fact, passed the last hours he'd spent with his sister-in-arms Unquiet in the Gallows taproom, though he had not been back since their parting. The innkeeper, Mistress Renee, looked him up and down upon his entrance and tossed him a damp bar towel to press to his still rather sodden ribs. "Well aren't you a pretty sight to see again. What was it you were called? We get so many of your kind passing through these days."

He had, when first they met, given her a different name, the name he had worn in the service of the Lich King, but now is tongue rebelled against saying it. "Solivar. Solivar Eventide. It is good to be back in your fine establishment."

She laughed, an oddly pleasant sound. "That's not what you said the first time, but we'll let it pass. How may my fine establishment serve you, Sir Eventide?"

_"Sir Eventide."_

That voice echoed in his ears again, and he forced himself not to start and to attend the question he was asked. "A room for the time being and a bath, if one's available."

The rooms in the Gallow's End contained real beds, mattresses stuffed with straw ticking regularly replaced, laid with linens and blankets and pillows still sweet-smelling from the closet herbs they were stored with, touches mostly intended for the tavern's occasional living patrons but which he appreciated nonetheless. He left his traveling gear locked in the chest provided and descended the stairs, looking forward to laying on something softer than a cut granite floor or a patch of ground for a change. The bathtub, a simple thing made entirely of cut and welded tin was brought up from some forgotten corner of the tavern's basement, required some cleaning out before it could be used but with the addition of several buckets of steaming water proved more than adequate to the task at hand. He washed the dried and clotted blood out of his hair first, using water reserved for that purpose and a chunk of soap that smelt of the same herbs that perfumed the bed-linens, and then climbed in for a relatively soporific soak. The chamber-maid, who'd helped him carry the bath out back and clean it, gathered up his bloody, mostly-ruined clothes with a sound that likely would have resembled tongue-clicking disapproval had she a fully intact tongue and returned a short time later with an actual towel and a light linen robe to wrap himself in once he was done.

It felt...good to sink into warm water again and a careful moment spent sorting through the contents of his mind yielded no memories of a recent vintage concerning such matters, though he suspected he'd enjoyed a nice bath when he still lived. He certainly had nothing to complain of now, scrubbing himself clean with a length of fresh linen cloth and letting the heat of the water lend him the illusion of human warmth. Sighing, he sank down until the tip of his chin touched the water and permitted his eyes to drift closed, luxuriating in the buoyant warmth...

_A pair of very warm, very real hands came to rest on his shoulders and he opened his eyes -- when had he closed them? -- to find his master's still-illuminated face a few inches from his own, pressing a father's kiss to his forehead, drawing him into a father's warm, tight embrace_. _"Find them. Keldris and Talia. You must find them."_

His eyes flew open, truly open, and for an instant the image of his master's face hung swimming before them, almost painfully radiant, brilliance slowly fading into ashen shadows. The words, by way of contrast, did not fade at all.

"Keldris and Talia." He whispered to himself, and reached for the towel, moment of motionless peace abruptly at an end. "Find them? What if I do, and they are gone beyond recall? What do you suggest I do then?"

To that question there was, almost blessedly, no answer.  
_  
_


	2. Buried History

_Finding Keldris and Talia proved to be considerably more difficult than he had hoped for._

Shadowglen, even under present circumstances, was not a large village, covering only a few dozen acres of the Tirisfalen hills and forest at the very edge of the vast, dark expanse of Silverpine, its homes and roads and businesses clinging to the sides and floor of the valley. Most of the town's hundred-odd souls had made their living in its major enterprise -- the mines they worked under royal charter, from which they extracted the metals that fed the capital's treasuries and minting-house -- and its associated tasks, the smelting-house, the smithy, the charcoal yards. A handful of sharecrofters helped work the local farmsteads and orchards, a handful of foresters helped keep the royal game lands clear of poachers, and a pair of well-known and highly sought after artisans, who preferred to live close to the source of their favored materials and who served as the village's headmen, were the only other permanent residents. Then the Plague had come, and the dead had risen, and the refugees from the East had begun pouring in, first as a trickle, then as a flood. Shadowglen, with its steep, narrow road and equally narrow entrance into the valley, its back to the wall of the mountains, became something other than a simple, sleepy hill town: it became a defensible strong-point, a place to send the overflow of exhausted, terrified easterners encamped in the shadow of the City's walls. And so, one fine early autumn morning, the weary, frightened folk of Shadowglen had woken to find a detachment of the King's soldiers and an equal-sized detachment of Church-trained knights marching into town with a squad of siege engineers and three hundred refugees in their train. The engineers had built a swiftly constructed but strong wooden palisade across the mouth of the valley, reopened and reinforced the played-out mine shafts, and then returned to the City; the soldiers and the knights had remained, to settle the refugees, to establish the field hospital, to help maintain the cordon that stretched from Brill to Silverlaine Keep to Fenris Isle to the City, to soothe the ruffled feathers of the locals, whose thoughts on the project had not been solicited prior to its execution.

Solivar himself spent the majority of the time either in the field hospital or assisting with the refugees, most of whom had arrived on the other side of the Bulwark in various states of exhausted, injured, and sick with both illness and fear, often with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and what little they had managed to scavenge along the way to aid their survival. Necessities -- food, clothing, blankets -- had been distributed to them at the City, but there were some ills and deprivations that no material gift could address: most of the refugees had lost someone, either to the Plague or to the dead, some had lost all, and many were the parents bereft of children, the children lacking anything other than compassionate strangers to see to their care. He went among them, tending injuries not severe enough to require a Light-blessed healer's hands, making certain illnesses that were not the Plague did not lead to a general panic, coaxing the despairing to eat and move and care for themselves as best they could. The children, in particular, required gentle handling, especially the youngest ones who had no family left to protect or advocate for them. Of the knights, he was among the best with the children -- an artifact of the years he had spent in service to the Sanctum of the Moon and its orphan's asylum in Quel'Thalas -- who found him a mythy as a dragon, his ears and hair a source of constant fascination, and the stories he could tell of heroes and wizards of whom they had never heard were a source of comfort far out of proportion to their actual entertainment value. Many of them needed that simple comfort of a warm cup of milk and a bedtime story, the lamp left burning to chase away the shadows, someone to hold them when they woke frightened in the night. He had been alone and frightened enough as a child himself to wish it on no one else, especially when the cause was so terrible.

The situation was substantially complicated by the attitude of the locals which, even a month on, tended to be standoffish at best, actively quarrelsome at the worst, and at nearly no time at all inclined toward helpful or neighborly. He supposed he could understand the tension but, at the same time, had little sympathy for it: had Shadowglen fallen to the dead and its people were forced to flee, he wondered how they would feel as refugees in their own homeland, treated as poor and unwelcome relations likely to steal the silver once they found a place of safety? He principally left liaising with the headmen to Aretegos, who possessed the authority lent not only by his knighthood but the noble Lordaeran title he would inherit on his next birthday, held his tongue as best he was able, reminded himself that patience and compassion were the higher virtues and that it was not very knightly to shout "What is WRONG with you people?!" while administering a sound beating no matter how obdurate others were in their unpleasantness. He had cause to remind himself of those very salient facts at least six times that morning, searching through the town, being greeted by villagers inclined to pretend his accent was totally impenetrable and harassed civilian support officials who were entirely too busy to answer simple questions. It was the best part of an hour before he found one of the objects of his search, as she rode in through the palisade gate at the head of her patrol.

"Talia!"

She reined her mount off to the side, turned in the saddle and spoke quietly to her lieutenant, offering a final salute and sending the soldiers under her command on their way. She did not object when he reached up and took the reins from her, and even accepted his hand down, so obviously stiff and tired from the hours she'd spent in the saddle that she actually leaned heavily on him for a long moment after her feet touched the ground. Together they walked her horse to the makeshift tent-stable without a word passing between them and from there to the mess, where he required her to sit and eat something before he would tell her the source of his errand.

"Now. Tell me, already." Her vivid green eyes were still heavily underlaid by weary circles, dark even against the warm brown of her skin, but she no longer looked as though she could fall asleep on her feet.

"The master is here. He wishes you to attend him in the chapel as soon as you can." He knew he was grinning like an idiot but could not help it.

Talia's eyes widened slightly. "Then I probably should. Had you been looking long? Oh, he'll be vexed."

"Not long, no. And I suspect he'll forgive me the liberty of making certain you're awake for what he wants to tell you." They rose together, and he gathered up her plate and mug. "Have you seen Keldris anywhere?"

"Our paths crossed just above Brill late last night -- his patrol was on its way in at the time." She snatched back her mug and finished off the last swallow of her tea. "I believe his long-term plan was to get something to eat and sleep for a few hours."

Keldris and Talia had both been riding back-to-back patrol shifts for whole days at a stretch, and so this plan was not surprising. Unfortunately, there was not a drop of mornbrew left in the mess, and so he settled for making a mug of the blackest tea possible, unadulterated by milk or honey, and set off to the pavilion that served their detachment as sleeping quarters. Also unfortunately, Keldris was not there, though his bedroll had obviously seen recent use. The officer of the watch grumped that it wasn't her job to keep track of wayward knights but confirmed that Keldris wasn't actually scheduled for a duty rotation until some time after midday. The mug of tea was stone cold and half empty despite the tongue-curling bitterness of it by the time his travels brought him to the refugee camp, tucked back hard against the hill and clustered around the unused mine shafts that had been reinforced for their use as shelters, a somewhat warmer and drier supplement to the multitude of tents both small and large that filled the far end of the valley.

Keldris normally claimed a violent allergy to small children brought on by being the eldest of six and having been sorely distressed by his younger siblings until he ran away screaming to Lordaeron. The affliction did not appear to be bothering him too greatly that morning as he crawled about on his hands and knees, three children under the age of five winters clinging to his back uttering savage war-cries as they slew imaginary ghouls right and left, another half-dozen cheering in a wide circle around them and demanding their turns to ride the horsie. He absolutely could not help the laugh that emerged from him at the sight, and Keldris got to his feet grinning his easiest grin, promising the children he'd come back to play more with them later.

"I wanted to bring you some mornbrew, but I'm afraid I got there a bit too late." He handed Keldris the half-empty mug. "And I wanted to give you a full cup, but I'm afraid it took me forever to find you and nature took its course."

"Excuses, excuses." Keldris, nonetheless, drank down the mug's contents in three swallows. "For what it's worth, I thought I'd find you over here when I came looking and instead discovered that your absence from your bedroll was not entirely the fault of adorable moppets."

"Not entirely, no. The master came in from the City late last night. He wants to see you in the chapel as soon as you can get there."

Keldris handed back the mug and automatically ran a hand through his disorderly mess of short-cropped auburn hair, rendering it even more messy than it was before. "Really? I'm astonished he found the time what with everything else that's going on. Did he say what it was about?"

"I think you'll be pleasantly surprised." He replied and turned back down the path, Keldris stretching his long legs to keep up.

"I other words, 'yes, but I'm not supposed to say.'" Keldris gave him a sidelong look. "Are you...feeling well? Your eyes are glowing more than normal this morning. You haven't taken a fever from one of your ankle-biting companions, have you?"

He laughed again, the sound catching the attention of passersby and earning glares in response. "No, no, I don't have a fever. In fact, I cannot remember the last time I felt this well. You'll understand in a few minutes, I suspect."

"Very well, preserve your air of exotic Quel'dorei mystery if you must." Keldris replied airily. "I'll find out soon enough."

He absolutely could not stop smiling. "Yes, yes you will."

Mistress Renee was, Solivar discovered quickly, not like most of the Forsaken whose acquaintance he had made thus far. For one thing, she did not seem to look back at life -- at _living_ \-- with the poisonous anger and bitterness that soured the souls of so many others who had suffered the same fate. There was more of sorrow than rage in her, and a preference for the touchstones of life -- warm fires, soft beds, a kettle singing in the coals and the scent of something good cooking on the stove -- that made the Gallows' End a welcoming place to both the living and those undead who shared her views. Which were, he realized within a day, the majority of the populace of Brill where, despite the constant danger of the Scarlet Crusade and the feral Scourge, the locals chose not to wallow in either hatred or self-pity, but go about their existence as best they were able. It made the people of Brill in general, and the proprietor of the Gallows' End in specific, far more pleasant to deal with than the vast majority of their fellows. He often wondered about the Forsaken: if they loathed the Lich King and all that he had done to them, all that he had forced them to do, why did they cling so to the trappings of his reign, the symbols by which he marked the kingdom he claimed, the souls he had enslaved? Such things had power, and he doubted the Forsaken could be ignorant of that; he sometimes suspected that the vast majority of them had simply transferred ownership of themselves, preferring the hand of their Dark Lady on the chains that bound them.

Renee, it seemed, opted for neither Arthas nor Sylvanas and so her doors were open to all, as was her advice and her help. When he asked her if she knew where he could find a map of Lordaeron dating from before the war, she had looked at him steadily for a moment and then gestured for him to follow her. In her office, a small room beneath the main staircase, she had one pinned to the wall, heavily annotated in different colors of ink. Patrol routes were marked in blue, as were safe-points along the cordon that began at the Bulkwark and stretched out to encompass the scattered farmsteads and market towns in both the East and the West, looping around Hearthglen and Silverlaine Keep. Heavy concentrations of the dead were bordered in red, wide swaths of carmine in the East, tightly isolated blots in the West, places that had fallen bordered in black. He traced the long black line that began in Andorhal and encompassed dozens of farms and villages, some named, some nameless, and ended in Stratholme, where many roads came together.

_"There's naught but death and the dead beyond this point, Sir Eventide. If you must take this way..."_

"I must."

"Then I pray the Light walks with you."

The hour candle Renee had lit was a quarter-mark lower when he opened his eyes again, words still ringing in his ears, familiar darkness swimming in his mind. It took him a moment to remember where he was, and why he had wanted to see the map at all, and a longer moment to discipline his shaking hands. Shadowglen, he found, lay where his unreliable memories insisted it was: west of Brill, high in the hills bordering the vast expanse of Silverpine Forest. It took him some time to find it, for the name had been neatly lined out and replaced, its new designation printed beneath it in Renee's crisp handwriting: _Deathknell._ The older notes, written in blue, marked it as a safe-point along the western patrol route, a refugee camp.

Renee was at the taproom bar when he emerged from her office, assiduously dusting fine cut crystal goblets that few, even among the tavern's living patrons, were actually inclined to use. He seated himself and, without so much glancing in his direction, Renee set down a glass, filled it from an earthenware jug she bought from beneath the bar, and slid it down to him, returning to her work without missing a beat. The contents of the glass were dark, nearly impenetrable by the light of the lamps, and thick as honey, the scent muted but strangely familiar. He sipped carefully, half-expecting cloying sweetness, only to find a familiar taste following the familiar smell: rich, refreshing bitterness, the tongue-curling hint of salt, cold that burned all the way down. He finished the drink in three swallows and Renee wordlessly poured him another.

"I was not aware," He finally observed, "that the Plaguebringer shared that particular recipe."

"The Plaguebringer did not," The mistress of the house replied, a little smile lurking around the corners of her mouth, "But one of your comrades in arms gave me a flask in payment for services rendered, and I reverse-engineered it as best I could. We do not lack for the primary ingredients, after all. I take it the results please?"

"Entirely." They sat in companionable silence for a long moment, while she cleaned the already quite spotless bar-top and he considered how to phrase what he wanted to say.

"Whatever you're thinking, just spit it out. I promise I won't fault you for want of eloquence." She took his cup from him and washed it at once, before the glass could begin to pit.

"You were a soldier," He finally managed, not quite making it a genuine question.

Renee responded as though it had been one anyway. "Toward the end, we were all soldiers. My little brother and I were the only ones in our village who survived the last outbreak." She shrugged slightly. "In the end, I did not survive all that came after. You?"

"I...am not entirely certain. My memories of that time are not all that they could be." He admitted, suddenly finding it difficult to meet her eyes. "But I think that I might have been."

"Mmm." She eyed him up and down. "Hard to say. You carry yourself like one now, for all that means."

He found it extraordinarily irritating that, of all the remnants of life that could afflict him, a nervously dry throat had to be one of them. "I have been enjoined to seek someone. Two, actually. I believe they were my former comrades -- kindred in arms."

Renee quirked what was left of her eyebrow upward in a silent question.

"Their names were Keldris and Talia." For some reason, he found it difficult to say their names to another, and he could not understand why.

"Were?" The corners of Renee's mouth quirked slightly. "No kin to claim them?"

"I do not remember those names." Solivar admitted, with difficulty. "Keldris...I believe he came from the south. He had the accent for it. I do not know where Talia came from."

Renee nodded, businesslike, and he felt oddly comforted by the briskness to it, the lack of judgment. "If you wish, I will ask about, see if any of the townsfolk know anyone who once went by those names. They might tell me more than they would a stranger, even one as charming as you." She smiled a genuine smile at his expression. "That's why I like you, Sir Eventide -- I can say such things to you and not think you'll split me in half in retaliation. Otherwise? Your best bet is likely the Undercity Census and the Royal Overseers. They keep the library and all the old records that could be salvaged. Who knows? Perhaps they'll be willing to part with one of their old maps."

Somehow hearing what he had already decided must be done coming from another's mouth made finally putting his plans into motion somewhat easier to manage. He had known that, eventually, he would have to descend into the Undercity, though he had thus far refrained from doing so, preferring to skitter about the margins of the Dark Lady's domain, the place to which he was most intensely drawn and by which most strongly repelled, the place he had returned when his will was first free enough to know choice again.

He knew that he could request a place there if he wished it -- the Forsaken claimed all the dead of free will as their own, one need only descend into the darkness beneath the fallen capital of Lordaeron, speak to the Royal Overseers, sign the name by which one wished to be known, swear allegience to the Banshee Queen. He knew that many of his sword-kin among the Ebon Blade had already done so, no matter where their loyalties had lain in the life before, and they had been accepted, some more grudgingly than others, but accepted nonetheless. He knew that many of the Quel'dorei who had fallen to the Scourge and who had risen from their deaths enslaved had come there for sanctuary. And the desire to join them was almost unbearably strong: to take back some small part of all that he had lost, to have a place that was unassailably his own, to belong to a place and have it belong to him, as well. Oh, he could not blame the Forsaken for turning to their Dark Lady for guidance and succor; some days it was all he could do not to go and kneel before her and beg her to lift the burdens of choice and freedom and memory off his shoulders and simply let her guide him into whatever purpose she wished him to serve. If the _ease_ of doing so had not felt like betrayal -- of himself, of something beyond himself -- he would have. He would have, and he knew it as surely as he knew his own name again. It was that knowledge, more than anything else, that had kept him away from Lordaeron's ruined palace, from the tunnels and lifts that linked into it. And he could not bring himself to walk boldly across the main entrance, the throne room where Arthas Menethil, not yet the Lich King, had begun the slaughter of his nation, of his people, with the murder of his father, whose blood yet stained the floor where he had fallen. He crept around the edge and through the room beyond, where the shrine to Terenas Menethil stood, softly illuminated. It seemed sacrilegious almost, and most definitely improper, for one such as himself to offer that altar anything and so he kept his distance from it, and from the Forsaken woman tending to it. It felt entirely too natural, entirely too _comfortable_, to descend into the city below, where everything was horribly like _home_: the dark stone, curves of the walls, the shallow canals containing nothing resembling water, the pervasive chill and the tang of embalming fluid, the sweet perfume of rot barely held at bay.

The public offices of the Royal Overseers, the keepers of the official Undercity Census, lay in the city's central quarter, in a little-visited nook beneath one of the vast arches supporting the titanic weight of the palace above. The clerk manning the desk closest to the entrance looked up as he approached and rose as he came inside, wringing his -- her? it was difficult to tell given the state of mummification and the dim light -- fleshless hands almost nervously. "How may we be of service," Palely glowing eyes flickered over him, "sir...?"

He executed a precise, polite bow from the shoulders. "Mercy. I am called Mercy." It was the name that the Lord of Naxxramas had given him as he'd knelt before a dark altar and sworn to be a faithful vessel of annihilation and here, in a place just as dark, it fell more naturally than he liked off his tongue. "I wish to make an inquiry, if I may."

"An inquiry?" He received the distinct impression that, had the clerk any eyelids left, it would have been blinking in befuddlement; he somehow suspected that the Royal Overseers did not actually get that much business, despite their residence in the Trade Quarter. "What sort of inquiry?"

"It is my understanding that the Royal Overseers are the keepers of the library and the archive of the kingdom's documents." The clerk nodded quickly in confirmation of that not-question, and he continued. "I wish to request access to both. In particular, I am seeking any documents that might have been recovered from the refugee camp in what was once in the precincts of Shadowglen."

"Shadow -- " The clerk was on the verge of wringing its digits entirely off. "Your pardon, my lord. If you'll have a seat for just a moment, I must consult with the High Overseer before I can grant your request."

The clerk scurried away in a state oddly reminiscent of high dudgeon and scurried back a handful of moments later, a taller, straighter being he took to be the High Overseer gliding along with it in its wake, and again he offered a respectful bow. The High Overseer was, in addition to being unbowed by the dessication of his muscles, a good two and a half hands taller than either the clerk or himself and used that height to his advantage, gazing with hollowed-out pits for eyes down the length of his hatchet nose in a manner no doubt deeply intimidating to both the living and the freshly undead. "Sir...Mercy. May I know why you wish to see the records pertaining to Shadowglen?"

Not for the first time, Solivar wondered how it was that a being who had no eyes could stare with such palpable force. "It is my belief that, prior to the War, I spent a considerable amount of time there." It was, after all, the truth and he could think of no good reason to conceal that under the circumstances. "I am in particular interested in the records of the refugee camp. I am...searching for someone, and I suspect that I might find pertinent information among those documents."

The High Overseer met his eyes unwaveringly and held his gaze for an utterly unsettling length of time after he finished speaking. The hairs on the back of his neck stirred, and a familiar scent filled his nostrils, touched his tongue as he took an experimental half-breath: cool, crisp, sweet, like the first bite of the first autumn apple, like a hard, deep gulp of well-water on a hot summer day, the unmistakable flavor of arcane forces being woven to a purpose. A spell, immensely swift and subtle, though he sensed he was not its object, arcane communion of some sort passing between the High Overseer and someone deeper inside the Undercity.

Finally, the High Overseer nodded once, briskly, and looked away. "You have been granted limited access to the restricted section of the Royal Archive." He held up one long-fingered, nearly skeletal hand. "For the next three hours only, and only from the section of the Archive pertaining to the Shadowglen refugee camp. A page will assist you and you will be...supervised...at all times. Do you agree to these terms?"

"I do."

"Very well. Follow me, and remain close." The High Overseer glided briskly away and Solivar had to stretch his legs to keep up, following at a close but respectful distance as they left the city's commerce center and entered the highly vaulted, heavily shadowed corridors beyond. As they walked, he caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye, a half-seen shadow detaching itself from the greater darkness that pooled between the Undercity's flickering, scattered sources of light, and realized that the 'supervision' had likely joined them, as well.

The Royal Library and the archive it contained lay far from the life, such as it was, of the Undercity, in the catacombs beyond the concentric rings of the perpetually occupied Quarters. Before the War, those catacombs had been where the high nobles of Lordaeron had buried their dead in opulent tombs and mausoleums, the deeds of their forebears carved in bas-relief on the marble-sheathed walls, laid out on the floors in exquisite mosaic. The Scourge had not spared those resting-places, and now little remained to show that they had ever existed: bits of colored tile clinging here and there to the corners, the disembodied marble head of some ancient Arathi-born warrior-lord used as a door-prop, human bones hollowed and capped in brass to serve as candlesticks. The corpses themselves were all long since gone, raised to serve in the shambling, rotting ranks of the mindless shock-troops, the necromantic sigils used in their defilement still burnt layers-deep into the stone floor, dormant in the absence of the unwalking dead. In place of carven marble tombs and gilt sarcophagi there now stood rank upon rank of stone shelves cut from the remnants, bearing the thousands of volumes of the Library itself, scavenged from the universities that had once drawn scholars to Lordaeron's capital and to equally ruined Dalaran, pillaged by the Scourge during the War. The remaining mausolea, most of which lined the far walls, had been long-since stripped of their contents and converted into small rooms for reading and study, equipped with the sort of indifferent furnishings common to the Undercity, though there were at least tables and occasionally a chair or two. The Archive turned out to be located in the least reconstructed portion of the catacombs, and likely the oldest, where the graves were little more than long, deep horizontal alcoves cut into the bedrock beneath the city, barely large enough to hold a shrouded corpse and an urn or two of grave-goods, covered over in a granite plaque bolted in place with rough-forged iron fittings. The Forsaken had, with admirable thrift, remade those plaques as section markers, chiseling away the old writing; the High Overseer gathered a page idling near the entrance with a curt gesture and bid her to lead him to the Shadowglen section and help him carry the refugee camp records to a work room in the Library proper.

The Archive showed the distinct signs of being the project of someone with two much time on their hands, and whom that time had obviously driven quite mad. It was not that the whole edifice of grave-shelves and wooden crates and waxed-paper file folders was disorganized -- quite the opposite. It was _too_ organized, not only by location and subject matter but alphabetically and by size, as well, and he silently pitied the page he'd been assigned the task of putting it all back precisely the way it had been once he was done with it. Fortunately, for her, there were only two small crates of documents from the refugee camp, neatly bundled together between sheets of heavy parchment laminated in wax, tied shut with strands of twine he went to pains to unknot and set neatly aside. The page set a fresh hour candle in a human ivory candlestick and lit it, dropping a quick, nervous curtsy when he gave her her leave and scurrying away to attend to duties that did not require her to keep close company in a small tomb/study room with a death knight. The first bundle of documents was an assortment of letters both from and to the headmen of Shadowglen and its environs and every conceivable official civilian and military involved in the provincial governance of Tirisfal and Silverpine, indicating in no uncertain terms how wroth they were with their valley being turned into a squatter's camp for refugees of doubtful health and even less certain temperament, spanning a period of some three months in the late summer and autumn of King's Year 617. He perused them briefly and laid them aside, his feelings comprised of equal parts despair and irritation -- despair for such petty foolishness in the face of unimaginable calamity, irritation because there was not one damned useful word in the lot. The rest of the documents in that box all dealt with matters of civilian government and the needs of the camp and its hospital, the minutiae of supply orders, death notices, birth records. The second box was more rewarding: it contained the records of the military forces stationed in the area, both the citizen levies and the knights of the Church and the Crown. The top layer were all reports: after-action and tactical analyses, each neatly scribed in several different cathedral-trained hands and, most importantly, _signed._ He went and begged a few scraps of foolscap and a spare pen from his page, and took down every name he could find: _A. Maugrisaine, F. Steelheart, K. Pellegrin, T. Delaine._ Beneath that was an even greater reward for his patience: duty-rosters. Some of the handwriting was atrocious and they were heavily covered in mornbrew rings and the remnants of more than a few meals, but they were for the most part legible.

He realized, a few moments into his examination of them, that if he were it still possible, his heart would have been racing and as it was he was having difficulty holding his hands steady. _K. Pellegrin_ was, in fact, _Keldris Pellegrin_, attached to the Silver Hand's mission to Shadowglen, a knight in service to the Church, as were Talia Delaine, Aretegos Maugrisaine, and Floramelia Steelheart.

He stepped out of the study room and looked about. "I know you are there. Make yourself seen."

A papery chuckle emerged from the room behind him, disturbingly close, and he could not help but feel the flesh between his shoulderblades crawl in response. "I think not."

"Very well," He shrugged slightly, to rid himself of the sensation, and resisted the urge to look over his shoulder. "The Census records -- may anyone examine them?"

"They're no tightly held secret of the state, if that's what you're asking." The papery voice sounded deeply amused by that question. "They're off in their own section -- the red ledgers the size of map-books." A cool breeze fanned his cheek as something unseen passed swiftly by on the left. "Right over there."

"I am going to look for something there, if that is acceptable?" Now he did glance over his shoulder, and found the room as empty as before -- though now a shadow other than his own lounged against the far wall.

"You've a half-hour left on your time," His unseen companion whispered, still dryly amused. "But I'd hurry if I were you."

Each volume of the Undercity census was massive, a tall man's armspan across and half again that tall, containing as they did not only a simple citizenship listing but also a considerable amount of documentation concerning the disposition of those citizens, their property claims, and present affiliations. To his mingled relief and disappointment, he found no Pellegrins, Steelhearts, or Maugrisaines in the Census -- though there was, he noted, a map of Eastern Lordaeron appended in several volumes, marking those noble houses for whom no survivors were known, no claimants to any remaining property -- and only one Delaine. Who was not Talia, but Lythandros Delaine, lately of Dalaran, member in good standing of the Royal Apothecary Society, attached to the Hand of Vengeance and presently deployed in Northrend.

The tip of something quite sharp tapped him neatly between the shoulderblades far, far before he was ready to close those books. "Time, Sir Mercy. Do come again soon."

"Very well." He closed the Census volume he was bent over, and gathered his papers, careful not to smudge the still-wet ink of his last notes. "I thank you for the assistance, and your forbearance, sir...?"

The candle sconces to his right all bowed slightly in that same direction, toward the Library entrance, as something unseen passed close by them. He sensed, rather than saw, that unseen, unheard thing come to a halt, felt the weight of someone's gaze on him. "Morholt. Only Morholt. Niceties only complicate matters, don't you think?"

The sensation of eyes on him vanished, the sense of someone with him receded rapidly away.

And yet he could still feel the skin between his shoulderblades prickling, waiting for a blade. Irritated, he shook it off again and went to find his page.

Lythandros Delaine might not be Talia, but at least it was a place to start.


	3. Lover's Heart

  
The Undercity was not, in general, a place that lent itself gracefully to joy or laughter, song or dance, fireworks or ridiculously messy festival foods, the lightheartedness that characterized the holiday celebrations of other domains who claimed brotherhood with the Horde. The civic fetes most beloved to the unbeating hearts of the Forsaken were by turns morbid and savage, the harvest-home that counted among its bounties the hot blood of the living, the days set aside to honor the dead with offerings of perfumed smoke and succulent foods, paper effigies of grave-goods and bright, beautifully dying flowers. Oh, certainly, for the rest they hung the brightly colored lights, the wreaths of wintergreen and spring flowers and the lacy trappings so dear to lover's hearts, permitted the goblins to set up their booths and hawk their wares, but those were matters of commerce, for most of the undead still conducted their business in the language of hard coin, and the bare minimal gestures of solidarity toward their Horde brethren, who were frequently, infuriatingly preoccupied with the frivolities of life and living. The Forsaken admitted few such weaknesses, or even the desire for them, and the only song or singing that ever echoed through the city's unpleasantly dark and silent halls was the aching grief of the Dark Lady herself, the keening dirges of her banshee sisters.

When a papery, somewhat nasal tenor strolled through the city's echo-prone byways singing a love-ballad last popular in Lordaeron some years before nearly everyone died of either the plague or the sword it therefore attracted some attention.

_'She was in a flowery garden when first she caught my eye,  
And I but a marching soldier, she smiled as I passed by...  
The flowers she held were fresh and fair, her lips were full and red,  
And as I passed that shady bower these words to me she said:'_

Memories stirred among those who heard that voice, that song. Marshlight eyes dimmed and untiring hands stilled at their tasks.

_'Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part.  
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lover's heart.'_

That voice, that song, recalled golden afternoons in springtime orchards heavy with apple-blossom and the city's well-groomed pleasure gardens alike, the simple beauties of the life before, before plague, before treachery and anguish and loss.

_'She was by the shore in the evening, when next I saw my dear.  
Running barefoot by the waterside, she called as I drew near...  
The sunlight glanced at the water's edge making fire of her auburn hair,  
My young heart danced at her parting words that hung in the evening air:'_  


That voice, that song, recalled sweet summer evenings on the shores of Lordamere, stealing kisses and caresses in the starlight as the night-birds sang and the waves lapped on the rocks and it seemed impossible that life and love should ever end.

_'Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part.  
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lover's heart.'_

Many who heard that voice, that song, rose from their places to seek its source, parting dusty curtains and peering around corners, half in anger, half in the desire to hear more.

_'She was on the strand in the morning when orders came to sail.  
And as we slipped our ropes away I watched her from the rail...  
Oh, damn, I can't remember the next two stanzas,  
Something something something with roses, I think?

Oh, well, perhaps I will ask him if he remembers  
The next time we me ~ et!'

_

Morholt offered a sheepish rictus grin to the blank-eyed faces that lined the route, shrugging slightly. "My apologies, everyone, it's been quite some time since I sang that one. I can do _The Firebird of Sweet Quel'Thalas_, if you like?"

No one, apparently, wished to hear a lugubrious tragic ballad about doomed Quel'dorei lovers separated by fate and their incessantly quarreling families. Morholt nodded apologetically, again, to the departing backs of his fellow citizens and continued on his way, still humming that particular tune deep in his throat, lacking as he did the mobility in what remained of his lips to successfully whistle. A minor, petty cruelty, but a satisfying one for all that, to see the happy, human memories flickering in their eyes and then to douse that flame. One took one's pleasures where the opportunity arose and he took this one in the anticipation of much, much greater things to come, an actual honest-to-the-Shadow spring in his step as he made his way home. He continued his personal musical accompaniment even as he entered the modest crypt he called his own, closing the door, locking it, and arming that traps that would make certain any who attempted to test their skills against his security precautions were making the last mistake of their existence. He burst full-throatedly back into song as he went about his preparations, extracting the items he required from his small chest of possessions, setting the mirror of polished stone blacker than moonless midnight just so, placing the arcanely carven candle in its shallow dish, offering the spines adorning the mirror's frame a taste of the thick, not-quite-liquid substance that served him for blood and igniting the wick of the candle, its flame burning a sickly greenish hue.

The mirror's surface flickered, lightened, and from somewhere far away, he heard the sounds of sea-birds raucously calling, the rumble of waves crashing against a breakwater. He continued to sing.

_'She was on the strand in the morning when orders came to sail.  
And as we slipped our ropes away, I watched her from the rail.  
She threw me a rose that fell between us, and floated on the bay,  
And as our ship pulled from the shore, I heard her call and say:

Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part.  
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lover's heart.

Now the soldier's life won't suit me, sweet music is my trade.  
For I'd rather melt the hardest heart than pierce it with a blade.  
Let the time be short till I return to my home in the mountains high,  
And the loving girl who stole my heart with these words as I passed by:

Last night we spoke of love, now we're forced to part.  
You leave to the sound of a marching drum and the beat of a lover's heart.'

_

"A serenade, Morholt? To what do I owe the honor?" The voice that emerged from the mirror's surface was rich and smooth, with the barest hint of accent, a living voice, and Morholt smiled with bright, fierce hate to hear it.

"You will never believe whom I happened to meet, purely by chance mind you, today in the Undercity. Go ahead -- guess." He could not _quite_ keep his amusement entirely contained, and it showed.

"A serenade _and_ a children's game. My cup runneth over." His interlocutor, on the other hand, was clearly not entertained at all. "_Tell me._"

"A death knight, who gave his name to High Overseer Bauhaus as Mercy, but whom you and I both know somewhat better as Solivar Eventide." Morholt bit off each word with savage precision.

For a long moment, silence prevailed in the wake of this announcement, broken only by the far away rumble of waves, the distant screeching of gulls. Then, "Like the needle to true north. What was his purpose?"

"He _could_ have just come to get his hair cut, you know, it's been years." And when that achieved no reaction, "He caused a minor stir when he asked to see some of the old records pertaining to Deathknell, then he consulted the Census. He is searching for two of our old comrades -- Keldris Pellegrin and Talia Delaine. At the moment, I know for a certainty, he is in Brill preparing to take ship to Northrend, where the last of Talia's kin is spending his time in service to the Apothecaries. That is, unless you want me to make certain no one ever finds his body. I'm willing, you know."

"Yes, I know." A certain wry amusement touched those words. "And while your offer is tempting, I fear that it might also be...somewhat premature. He may yet be of use, in his own way."

"Letting him run about unsupervised is hardly the height of wisdom. Who knows what trouble he'll get into without a firm hand on him?" Morholt grinned, sharp teeth glinting in the candlelight. "I could do that, too."

"I suspect that Radiance would accomplish that task even more efficiently than you, dear Morholt."

Morholt resisted the urge to spit. "That bloodthirsty lunatic? Even more likely to behead him and have done with it than I."

"Radiance's obsessions are not the same as your own in that regard." Dryly. "And I have another task in mind for you. These comrades. Tell me of them."

"You should have written him more when he was living here -- you'd know this already." Morholt hissed. "Talia was the daughter of some high muckety family in Dalaran -- not a drop of talent in her but important enough as her father's only heir to be a chess piece when her parents died. Ran away here and pretended to be a boy, rather successfully, for years during our novitiate with the Church. Keldris was the brat of a baron from Stormwind -- sent north in disgrace for some idiotic thing he did back home. They were all three joined at the hip."

  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  


  
"If they live, find them. Use your Watchers to keep them under surveillance." A pause. "If they do not live...inform me, and I will ascertain what can be done to rectify that."

"As my lord wishes," Morholt replied, tone freighted with false humility.

"Your forbearance on this issue is noted." The surface of the mirror flickered, faded, darkened back to polished stone and nothing more.

Silence.

"_Find_ them." Morholt muttered to himself, and doused the candle between the tips of two bony fingers. "_Find them._ What does he think I am, an _amateur?_"

He gathered away the mirror, the candle, wrapped them in a cloth whose substance crawled with arcane embroidery, sigils of containment and concealment, and returned them to their place, extracting as he did so a many-chambered wooden casket. The Order of the Silver Hand was greatly, sorrowfully diminished, reduced from a brotherhood that numbered in the hundreds to a bare handful of survivors scattered across the face of the world. Oh, certainly, after the fall of Lordaeron, the Church in Stormwind had continued to mint paladins and _call_ them Knights of the Silver Hand -- but none of them so-called had learned their path at the knees of Uther Lightbringer or Alexandros Mograine or any of the others who first wore the mantle, the ones who had fallen with their homeland. As a matter of professional competence, he employed a vast profusion of useful idiots to maintain a general knowledge of where most of them were at any given time, and entirely specific knowledge of where some where at all times, should the Dark Lady or one of his other masters decide that the pathetic remnants require elimination. Some were easier than others -- Tirion Fordring, for example, made little secret of his comings and goings, though reaching the new Ashbringer long enough to stick a knife in him would be a challenge worthy of the talents of every lightslayer in the Undercity, as well as the product of Fortune's brightest smile.

Keldris Pellegrin and Talia Delaine were no Lightbringers-in-waiting, but they were among the last students of that first generation, among the last to be inducted into the Order of the Silver Hand before the fall of Lordaeron, and their master had been Alexandros Mograine, before he had acquired the name by which he was still known: Ashbringer, hammer of the Scourge. And, unlike their mentor, unlike Tirion Fordring, they were nominally within his reach. His old friends. His fellow students. Still touched by the grace of the Light. Sometimes it took all the _patience_ and _discipline_ had ever had not to go where they dwelt and invite them to a touching reunion with knives in the dark.

Around his neck, on a silken lanyard, hung a whistle. It was carved, he was assured, from bone, though it looked and felt like no bone he had ever seen, lightless black and covered over in an oil-slick sheen, and it tasted strange on his tongue, making no sound audible to his ears when it was blown. _Something_ heard, though, and that something slithered soundlessly from the darkest corners of his ill-lit abode, liquid darkness that spooled up from the floor in a slender, writhing column of no fixed shape, its contortions disturbing even to his own dead eyes.

"Make yourself two," Morholt commanded it curtly, and the darkness twisted, tightened, parted in a stretching of midnight strands of being and substance.

From his little box with its many small drawers he took two objects: half an ivory comb, its broken spine carved in a delicate approximation of a sunseeker vine thick with flowers, several long strands of black hair still tangled about the tines; a scrap of black cloth no larger than his hand, its edge still lined in frayed, tarnished silver thread, stiffened with the dried blood of the man it had belonged to. He tossed one object to each Watcher, tentacular filaments reaching out to catch, caress, subsume into the creature's own substance.

"Stormwind. Light's Promise. Watch them close -- but not _too_ closely. Do nothing else unless I command it."

The Watchers folded in on themselves, collapsed downward and slithered away with eye-disturbing speed. In the wake of their departure, Morholt sat perfectly still for a long moment, eyes half-lidded as he thought of many things, many things he had no desire to think of again, memories welling up unbidden. He reached into one of the several interior pockets of the simple dark jerkin he wore and withdrew the object he had lifted, ever so carefully, from the unguarded back of its owner as he had bent over a sheaf of mission reports half a decade old, not recognizing his own neat handwriting. He drew the long strand of frost-white hair out between his fingers, touched it to the tip of his tongue, savored the taste.

_Oh, little brother, I think we will meet again, sooner rather than late. And who knows? Perhaps when we do, I'll have your lover's heart in hand for you._


	4. Chapter 4

_"Solivar!"_

All the air left his lungs in a startled gasp, forced out by a combination of genuine surprise and the projectile arrival of Floramelia Steelheart's arms around his middle, heaving him off his feet with the enthusiasm of her embrace -- a rather impressive feat, given that her head came barely to the middle of his chest and he was wearing full armor. A full spin later, she set him back down, laughing, and let him catch his breath. "It is good to see you again, too, Flora. How have things been in Silverwood?"

"A fair sight quieter than they've been about here, I would guess." The dwarven woman grinned easily up at him, tucking the tendrils of fine brown hair that had come loose from her braid back behind her ear. "Yeh look like you've been dragged through the land of no sleep by yer ears."

"The dead breached the cordon around Brill in three places last week." Her smile vanished at those words. "If we did not know them to be essentially mindless, it would almost have seemed a coordinated action -- they struck during the change of the patrols, in different spots, within minutes of each other. It was a near thing for a time."

"I can imagine." Flora murmured, glancing back in the direction from which he had come, the field hospital still a hive of activity. "Silverwood an' the lands about the Keep have only seen stragglers here an' there."

"Flora! Solivar!" The call came from further up the path, and he turned to wave at its source.

Aretegos did not quite execute the full lift-and-spin embrace but his greeting was hearty nonetheless. He had, in the weeks they had spent apart, acquired a new, well-groomed growth of copper-blonde beard that brought his resemblance to his uncle into even sharper relief, as well as several dings and scratches to his armor and a brilliant internal radiance that burned like the sun itself in his heaven-blue eyes. Flora glowed from within, as well, and he found himself sharing a somewhat giddy three-way laugh with them as they all realized the change that had taken place within them simultaneously.

"When did they find the time?" Aretegos asked once the laughter had died down, wiping something suspiciously like a tear of joy -- or perhaps relief -- from his eye.

"Lord Mograine arrived three days ago and made the arrangements for Keldris, Talia, and myself." Solivar shook his head slightly at the brief look of dismay that crossed Aretegos' face. "Now. He has not been that terrible about it..."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes. Now he is only ten feet tall and dead-proof. That is down from at least thirty and capable of taking on every ghoul in the East single-handed." Solivar smiled wryly. "Talia, of course, did not let it go to her head at all."

"An' you?" Flora gunned him in the ribs and he found himself coloring to the tips of his ears.

"I assure you that Sir Bridenbrad's concerns about the extent of my enthusiasm are only slightly justified." He could not quite keep the rue from his voice.

Flora rolled her eyes. "Oh, I'm sure. Passed out at least twice trying to overdo it, unless I miss my guess."

"...Three. And I was not overdoing it, I simply misjudged the required length of my own recovery time." He replied, with as much dignity as he could muster in the face of their chorus of snickers. "I am entirely certain you two have been paragons of restraint and moderation..."

Flora and Aretegos exchanged glances and both had the grace to look embarrassed.

"I had tae be tied to the saddle half-way here. There's a flood headed toward Hillsbrad, everyone who can afford it and many who cannae are sending their wives and children as far west as they can." Flora rubbed the back of her head sheepishly, putting her braid entirely out of order. "Made for lots o' skinned knees an' thrown backs."

"You two and your healerly excesses." Aretegos shook his head in mock sorrow. "I, on the other hand, have neither smitten anything nor felt the uncontrollable desire to smite anything -- "

"Ye havnae had anything TO smite." Flora pointed out tartly. "Before that, yeh worked yerself into the infirmary riding circuits three days running an' refusing to sleep because yeh sensed the dead under every rock an' leaf."

"If the master could hear this conversation, he would die laughing and then order us all confined to quarters until we were demonstrably sane again." He shook his head. "Are the others with you? Or have you heard from them?"

"Vangalos and Melias were recalled to the capital some weeks ago -- Princess Calia selected them by name for addition to her personal bodyguard." Aretegos replied, voice low. "Galathas...My lord uncle decided that he was not yet ready and remanded him to Sir Dathrohan for further training."

"Oh, dear."

"If you're thinking 'nothing good can come of Vangalos and his wretched poetry about the glorious, sad-eyed beauty of Lordaeron's fairest flower being that close to the actual princess,' we are in total agreement."

Solivar was, in fact, very much of the opinion that if the princess wished to please herself with terrifyingly bad meter, scansion, and a lover of her own choosing, she had long since earned the right to do so. It did not, however, seem politic to address such opinions to her male relatives, no matter how distant a cousin he might be. "I was actually thinking that must not have gone over very well at all."

"Well, no." An expressive grimace. "The little snot stopped just short of saying six or seven unforgivable things and rode off looking like he was going to his execution and not to Hearthglen."

"Hearthglen? Not the city?"

"Hearthglen. Lord Fordring has volunteered the use of his lands as a staging ground and Sir Dathrohan has moved the bulk of the forces under his command there." Aretegos glanced up and down the path and lowered his voice. "Rumor has it that our recall to the city is going to be brief, and that we're slated to rotate out into the East to aid the field operations."

"The master did not mention that before he departed," Solivar replied. "It does not seem like the sort of thing he would overlook."

"True. But he also has a great many things on his mind." It was also true that Aretegos' intelligence on such things was usually good -- he was related to half of Lordaeron through his mother's family, it sometimes seemed, and possessed sources of information that the rest of them generally lacked. "What were you up to before we so rudely interrupted you?"

"I was about to make my farewells to the children in the refugee camp." He admitted, easily, and gestured for them to follow.

"That soft heart of yours is going to be the death of you one day, Solivar..."

It was fortunate that the airship route linking the Undercity to the territory claimed by the Forsaken in Northrend was offered free of charge -- by the time he was finished making restitution for the ruined forge floor, paying a perfectly aggravating amount in fees to Royal Library copyists, obtaining adequate replacement armor, and settling his tab with Renee, he was richer in tarnished virtue than silver.

"Perhaps you should change your name to the _Poor_ Knights of the Brotherhood of the Ebon Blade?" The mistress of the Gallow's End suggested with unconcealed amusement as he prepared to take his leave. "It might garner a bit more sympathy for your sorry plight."

"I am relatively certain that if we did that someone would consider the possession of horses, armor, and weapons sufficient grounds to complain that we are not yet poor enough to qualify for the designation." He smiled wryly and surveyed the collection of equipment spread out on one of the tavern tables; despite his financially diminished state, there still seemed a bit too much of it to fit in just the one bag. Especially given the unwieldy size of the copy-books of Lordaeran history, which he was loath to leave behind.

Renee laughed at that, but nonetheless shook her head in agreement. "You might just have a point. Are you certain you've got everything you need?"

"I believe so." The undead required no food or drink, or at least not in the same manner as the living, and his personal indifference to the elements needed no heavy wool or fur-lined clothing to maintain, so he carried none of the things that made up the usual bulk of a traveler's baggage in Northrend. Instead, the table was covered in useful odds and ends -- several lengths of rope, a newish spyglass, an alchemical alembic carefully packed in lamb's-wool against breakage, his scrivener's case, a bag of dried herbs all neatly encased in waxed paper and labeled with their various uses, medical supplies in their own leather-and-canvas satchel -- and weapons. A vast, almost disturbing profusion of weapons. He could honestly not remember where he found them all. And, of course, the books.

Renee looked the collection, and then him, over. "Are you really going to need _all_ the stabbity things? Even in Northrend?"

"In all likelihood, no." He admitted, after a moment's contemplation.

"Then pick your favorite three and I'll store the rest, if you like. And the same for your breakables -- are you really going to be brewing much ink? No? Then leave it here." She elbowed him aside. "_The Rise and Fall of the Arathi Empire. The Romance of the Seven Kingdoms. The Arathi Successor States: Lordaeron. Horse-Lords and Iron Saints: Lordaeron and the Order of the Silver Hand._ Well. I suppose if all else fails you can open to a random page and bore the Scourge to true death...or, you know, drop one of these on their heads from a great height."

"I will have you know that _The Romance of the Seven Kingdoms_ is one of the most entertaining things I have read in...I do not even know how long. Scourge literary endeavors are...uniquely hideous that way. And mostly written by Kel'Thuzad." She was looking at him as though he had grown another head. "In any case, I hope they will help jog my memory."

Renee shook her head. "Hopeless. Here, give me that pack..."

Solivar was beginning to suspect that all tavern mistresses and innkeepers were taught a very particular sort of magic when they took up the mantle, for in a very short time she had the entire mess gathered up and put away and with several more things added: a package containing a handful of heavily enchanted flasks, their contents dark and thickly liquid. "Mistress, I cannot -- "

"I know, I know. You spent your last bent copper on history books that no one reads any longer." She shook her head again, and gave him a look that was equal parts amusement and exasperation. "Consider it a going away present. When does your boat leave?"

"I am reliably informed that the goblins take great umbrage at the use of any term but 'airship.'" He replied, amused. "The entire flotilla departs at midday. I understand that crossing the North Sea by night makes random assault by Alliance harriers less likely. Or at least less likely to be successful."

"I suspect that's debatable. Keep away from the sides, at any rate -- those rails wouldn't stop a gnomish toddler from going over, much less a grown man in full plate."

"Yes, Mistress."

"And don't let the deathguards talk you into playing dice for any stakes. Not that you've got anything to stake but your -- well, never mind. They've all had years of nothing to do but stand around and look menacing or gamble."

"Yes, Mistress."

"Travel papers in order? Stamped? Sealed?"

"Yes, right here."

"Good, good." She handed the neatly ribbon-bound, wax-sealed packet issued to him by the Overseer's office, indicating the rights of service to the Undercity and the Horde by which he was permitted to make use of the airships. "You should hurry along now -- they're always looking to press-gang travelers into helping load the cargo, and you might even pick up some coin from it. Scat."

"What would I do without you, Mistress?" He captured her hand and bowed low over it for a moment longer than strict courtesy required, genuinely touched.

She snatched her appendage back and smacked him lightly with it. "Be poorer and even more homeless. Fair travels to you, Sir Eventide. And when you get back, stop by and tell me about them. It's been...pleasant to have a regular guest again."

"Of course. And thank you again, for everything that you have done for me."

The Undercity's flight towers stood atop the rolling gorse-and-heather clad hills that lay between Brill and the city proper, the high stone spires added to buildings that were labeled as a Royal Post remount station on Renee's map of pre-War Lordaeron. At present, those buildings and the sere, somewhat overgrown hills around them were aswarm with activity: three impressively large airships were tethered atop the towers and a steady stream of people and things passed between them and the ground, the goblin flight crews taking the opportunity to stretch their legs or rest a bit between departures, drudges living and undead carting crates and boxes and barrels of war materiel and supplies up the frankly rickety-looking tower stairs under the close supervision/protection of the heavily armed goblin security personnel, passengers queued up and awaiting their opportunities to board, complaining very quietly about the delays under the watchful, unblinking eyes of the Undercity's own deathguards. He quietly joined the end of one such line, dwarfed by the passengers waiting next, a trio of tauren, troll, and orc, whose conversation halted as he approached and who glared steadily at him as he set down his pack to wait. He inclined his head in peaceable greeting and, when it became clear that he had no intention of moving, they went back to their conversation in significantly lowered voices, darting occasional glowers over their shoulders, which he studiously ignored. Slowly, and significantly beyond the stated midday departure time, the queue began to flow with much grumbling and shifting of baggage, with goblin armsmen stalking up and down the line thumping people who failed to step swiftly enough. At the bottom of the tower a direly harassed young goblin woman checked papers and waved passengers through as swiftly as her arms could move. "Keep your cold weather clothing and anything you don't want stowed. Leave your bags. Move, people, move."

His favored weapon was already strapped across his back and so he simply took the first book he could reach once he reached the bottom of the tower, avoiding goblin-maul swats as he went, tucking his papers back inside his armor. Up close, the airship was even more impressive than it appeared from the ground, larger than the strictly passenger vessels that traveled between the Undercity and the Horde lands in Kalimdor, more heavily armored, and clearly more accustomed to taking fire -- long scorch-marks scarred the gondola's sides and the heavily enchanted bag had clearly been repaired more than once. A bruiser discouraged further gawking on his part with a poke to the knees and so he stepped aboard with a number of unasked questions circulating in his mind, and permitted himself to be shooed starboard into a slot immediately next to the railing without a word of complaint. By the time boarding was complete, sitting room was at a premium, as was elbow room -- and despite it, a certain evident gap had appeared around him that allowed him both and, with a sigh, he chose to make use of his fellows' discomfort-largess, settling with his back pressed against the not as rickety as it seemed rail, sitting on his book. With a sputtering cough, the airship's fans came to life, the docking lines tossed in, and, much more swiftly than he had thought possible, the vessel pulled away from the tower, climbing swiftly and steadily into the constant murky overcast and, abruptly, above it. The sunlight speared his eyes without mercy and not for the first time he wished he still had tears, as he blinked the dazzle-flashes out of his vision. It was late in the day -- later even than own sense of time had suggested, the sun well on the way toward the western horizon, and sinking quickly; the autumn breeze, above the cloud-wrack and plague-mist that kept Tirisfal in constant dank twilight, was brisk and sweet.

A sudden, horrendously high-pitched screech from the stern of the airship drew all attention; more than a few attempted to leap to their feet and draw weapons, expecting an attack, and even more flung themselves flat and covered their heads, expecting an explosion.

And then the screech resolved itself into words. "IS THIS THING ON? OH, YES, IT IS. THIS IS YOUR CAPTAIN SPEAKING. PAY ATTENTION BECAUSE I WILL ONLY BE SAYING THIS ONCE. WE ARE _OFF SCHEDULE_. THIS MEANS OUR FLIGHT WILL BE ARRIVING IN NORTHREND AT DAWN INSTEAD OF BY NIGHT. THIS MEANS THAT THE ALLIANCE WARSHIPS THAT PATROL THE HOWLING STRAITS MAY START SHOOTING AT US. IN THE EVENT OF AN EXPLOSION, USE THE EMERGENCY EXIT LOCATED IN THE PORT RAILING AND TRY TO HIT THE WATER FEET-FIRST. OH, AND TAKE OFF YOUR ARMOR, OR YOU'LL SINK. IN ORDER TO AVOID BEING SHOT AT, WE WILL BE RUNNING SILENT AND WITH LIGHTS OUT AS SOON AS WE ATTAIN CRUISING ALTITUDE. THAT MEANS EAT NOW. IF ANY OF YOU NEXT TO THE RAILS SEE ALLIANCE COLORS, SING OUT."

Another chorus of general disgruntlement met this statement, but there was no real quarreling with it: the other passengers brought out their traveling food and arranged their sitting places as comfortably as possible for the long, cold, and now soon to be dark flight to Northrend. Solivar propped his sheathed sword against the rail next to him, and folded his legs as compactly as possible, gazing out over the rail. He had, in truth, expected flying in a goblin airship to be a more discomfiting experience than it had been thus far, replete with strange chemical smells, disturbing sounds at random intervals, and the constant threat that the whole thing would fly apart at the seams at any moment, gossip suggesting that riding one of the things was, at best, taking one's life in one's hands. Instead, he found it not unpleasantly reminiscent of a necropolis in motion, the vibrations of the engine and the sensations of the swift, steady glide through the air only more obvious because of the airship's smaller size. Far below, the evergreen-shrouded hills of Lordaeron gave way to the high-towering cliffs and rocky coves of the long coastline, and from there to the iron gray waters of the North Sea. To the west, those waters slowly devoured the sun, its fall transmuting the waves to a tide of glass-smooth shadow and the vault of the sky to an arch of crimson, golden, violet. As he watched, the very brightest of the stars began to emerge in the twilit haze of the east.

_"We call that one Asthera, the Grieving Maiden," Overhead, the sky fell away into starlit infinity, flawlessly clear and marred only by the occasional drift of smoke from the campfire._

"I'm sure I sense a story in that." Keldris' head, warm and heavy against his arm, shifted slightly as he turned his gaze upward. "The red one?"

"No, there." He raised his free arm and pointed, as best he could; it had been a very fine bottle of wine they'd drunk over supper. "The blue one -- there. She sits by the River of Sorrow, the tears she wept when her brother brought her the false news of her lover's death in battle."

"Oh, ho! So there is a story." Keldris rolled fully onto his side, perhaps not coincidentally removing the last of the space between their bodies. "Why did her brother lie?"

"Asthera's brother despised her lover as unworthy of her, and no proof of virtue, no act of heroism, could change his mind. And so in the confusion of battle, he thrust his weapons into her lover's body and left him bleeding on the field, believing he would die, and that his sister would forget the liaison and seek a more suitable mate." His hand found its way into Keldris' hair. "But her grief knew no end and no balm and her tears flowed unceasing, as did her lamentations. The air itself was so moved by the anguished beauty of her mourning song that, when she sought to end her life by throwing herself from the high cliffs by her father's house, the wind caught her and bore her safe to the ground. The waters drank deep of her tears and knew her grief, and so when she tried to walk into the sea to drown herself, the waves refused to claim her and instead washed her safe to the shore. The fire had borne witness to the purity of both her love and her sorrow, and so when she ordered her maids to build a great funeral pyre for her that she might join her beloved, the flames refused to consume her flesh. The earth had felt the crushing weight of her pain in her every step, but when she took up a knife to let flow her blood as well as her tears, the steel refused to even scratch her skin. Instead, they took up her song, earth and air, fire and water, every spirit of earth and sky filling the celestial vault of heaven with the sweet sorrow of her plaint, so that even the highest of the most high heard it and were moved."

"The highest of the most high?"

"Sister Moon and Brother Sun." He smiled slightly. "But that is actually another story entirely..."

He came back to himself with the memory of silken hair on his fingertips and human warmth pressed close beside him so strong that he reached out blindly into the full darkness after it as the sensation began to fade, finding instead a handful of many-stranded necklaces and loose, rough woolen shirt. The grip that closed around his wrist had three fingers and stopped squeezing just short of snapping bones. "Do that again, dead thing, and I'll tear it off."

"My apologies," He whispered in reply, "I meant no offense."

"See that you do not." The troll released his arm and he pulled it back, sitting tensely and utterly still as he tried to remember the end of Asthera's story, if indeed he had ever known it.

Contrary to the captain's prediction of arriving precisely at the crack of day and under fire, the sickly yellow-white lights of Vengeance Landing's airship tower came into view while the sky was still full dark and the ship itself pulled up hard against the disembarkation platform with false dawn barely a grayish-yellow smear in the sky above the eastern cliffs. Goblin guardsmen moved quickly to prod those who had managed to fall asleep in their little nests of close-packed comfort awake, and even more quickly to usher those who were already awake off the ship and onto the platform, where the deathguards waited to offer what little welcome travelers received.

Which, in this case, was a rather desultory "Transit papers?" and "Reason for your visit?" from a pair of bored guardsmen whose lack of interest in standing atop the flight tower harassing travelers was as palpable the desire of the passengers to not be harassed more than necessary. The regular elements of the Horde military presence in Northrend entered the continent far to the west, through the high command post of Warsong Hold, and deployed to their duty assignments from there. Most of the travelers ahead of him in the disembarkation queue were mercenaries seeking to sign on with the Forsaken mission and were directed down the tower to the recruitment officers in the military outpost below.

"Papers?" He handed them over and received them back without even a glance. "Reason for your visit?"

"I seek an audience with Apothecary Lysander."

"Down the tower and to your --" The deathguard stopped in mid-sentence as what he said penetrated hundreds of layers of accumulated boredom. "Wait wait wait -- you want _what_?"

"I seek an audience with Apothecary Lysander." He repeated patiently; he remembered enough about the stultifying nature of endless rounds of guard duty to possess a modicum of sympathy.

"Lysander. You want to see _Lysander_." Both of the guards blinked owlishly at him. "What for?"

"The matter is a personal one. Is there some difficulty?" Mutters of discontent were starting at his back, impervious to the glare one of the guards shot over his shoulder.

"No...difficulty as such." The guard waved him through. "Apothecaries are quartered in the spindly-looking tower over yonder. Don't be surprised if...well, you'll find out soon enough."

Vengeance Landing was not a large settlement, its double-handful of tall, narrow buildings, constructed of the dark local stone, clustered close together atop a rammed earth scarp, the whole surrounded by a defensive wall of iron-reinforced stone, pierced at intervals by artillery emplacements. It was, however, a crowded one, particularly with the new arrivals staggering through the half-lit, unpaved streets lugging their baggage and searching for the local amenities, stepping on the tails of irritable plaguehounds, jostling for place with the locals, and generally adding more unpleasantness to what was manifestly an already tense situation. Deathguards outnumbered civilians by a considerable margin, as did the regular troops clad in the Undercity's colors; he caught the occasional glimpse, among them, of gleaming red eyes in a bone-white face, the traditional armor and arms of the Quel'dorei Farstriders rendered in a field superiority scheme that blent into the local foliage, the marks of the Banshee Queen's personal force of rangers. Solivar hung close to the base of the flight tower until the bulk of the new arrivals had passed, and the ensuing commotion had died down, to begin his own search.

He heard the Apothecaries before he saw or even smelled them, something of a first.

"INCOMPETENTS THE LOT OF YOU."

The shout rebounded off the close-packed walls, effectively obliterating the sound of any more softly-voiced reply, and was followed swiftly by a further torrent of invective.

"IDIOTS! COW-HANDED STRIPLINGS! I CANNOT IMAGINE WHAT I DID TO DESERVE BEING AFFLICTED -- "

Apothecary Lysander immediately struck Solivar as the sort of person who had perished in the grip of profound dyspepsia and, having found no respite from that condition in the icy arms of undeath, had instead decided to inflict it on everyone in his immediate vicinity. He was not a tall man -- his body's state of rigor did not allow for that -- but his obvious fury lent him a greater size than he otherwise could claim, his assistants in a state of half-cower before him as he raged, all four gathered together in the small court of what Solivar took to be the apothecary tower. The building's windows were all open and some were even still venting small traces of greenish vapor, the remnants of what must have been a profound stench still hanging in the air. One of the assistants glanced back and caught sight of him as he emerged from the alleyway linking their little court, and half-raised a hand in his direction. "Sir -- "

"SILENCE. NOT ONE WORD FROM ANY OF YOU OR I SWEAR I WILL HAVE YOU SENT TO NEW AGAMAND FOR SPARE ABOMINATION PARTS. THREE BATCHES. THREE BATCHES RUINED IN AS MANY WEEKS -- HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU TO NOT LET THE BASE MIXTURE COME TO A FULL BOIL! IDIOTS!"

The assistant stared mutely at him, clearly not willing to risk spending the rest of her existence as a component element in an abomination, for which he really could not blame her. "I beg your pardon."

"BEG ALL YOU LIKE!" Lysander spun on his heel and applied a glare that would have set a lesser being to flight. "What the fel do you want?"

"My apologies. I did not intend to interrupt." He sketched a courtesy, which had no noticeable mollifying effect. "I have come from the Undercity to make an inquiry. I may return later if -- "

"An inquiry? You?" Disdain dripped from every word. "What could one of your kind possibly have to inquire with the Royal Apothecary Society about?"

"I seek information regarding the whereabouts of one of your members." He replied, coolly, beginning to lose his patience with being 'your kinded' by the Forsaken. "One Lythandros Delaine."

"Lyth -- " The apothecary's mouth snapped shut, what was left of his lips tightening into a thin, hard line. Flicking a glance over his shoulder he snarled, "OUT OF MY SIGHT, THE LOT OF YOU. I'LL SUMMON YOU WHEN I NO LONGER WANT TO FEED YOU TO THE PLAGUEHOUNDS."

His assistants, clearly too wise to question the providence of their reprieve, scurried away as quickly as their legs could carry them. Lysander's shoulders slumped slightly further down as they went and he turned away, gesturing for Solivar to follow. The innards of the apothecary tower were decorated in the remnants of whatever disaster had prompted Lysander's wrath, the support beams still dripping with caustic condensation, the air thick enough to leave the unmistakable tang of overcooked alchemical products laying on his tongue with even a shallow, experimental sniff.

"An inquiry." Lysander muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, it seemed, as they climbed the tower to his private office. "Is that what they're calling it these days?"

"I am not certain what you mean." Solivar admitted, glancing out one of the narrow windows; far the in the distance, to the west, a fire burned close to the shore, an impressively huge column of smoke rising into the pre-dawn sky.

"I'm sure you don't." The resentment in Lysander's tone was unmistakable, even if its source was not, and he gestured for Solivar to remain on the stairs while he fetched something from his desk: a parchment affixed with both the royal seal of the Undercity and the wax medallion of the Royal Apothecaries. "Chief Plaguebringer Harris wished you sent to New Agamand as expeditiously as possible upon your arrival in Northrend. Give this to one of the bat handlers and they will provide you access to the express courier line animals."

Utterly confused, and deeply uncertain how much of that it was advisable to reveal, Solivar echoed, "Chief Plaguebringer Harris?"

"Yes." Lysander replied curtly. "He will brief you on the specifics of your mission. There is, however, one thing you should know."

"...And that?"

"Before this...unfortunate...lapse in judgment, Lythandros Delaine was one of our most skilled and talented colleagues." Lysander struggled to keep the emotion from his voice and failed, anger flashing hotly in the golden pinpoints of his eyes. "It is my belief, and that of many others, that his many years of dedicated and unfailing service to the Royal Apothecary Society has earned him the benefit of a far greater doubt than he has been given."

"Your advocacy is noted." He took the proffered parchment and bowed swiftly from the shoulders before his confusion could show too visibly. "I will take it into account during the course of my investigation. A good day to you, Apothecary."

"And to you, Deathstalker."

Solivar descended the tower and walked swiftly away, his thoughts chasing themselves in a tight circle around that single word: _deathstalker_.

The Forsaken possessed one of the smallest and most tightly disciplined military presences within the greater body of the Horde. This was by both design and necessity -- the Quel'dorei military theory that the Banshee Queen clearly hewed to yet in many ways dictated that a smaller force was a more agile and responsive force, and the grade of discipline she demanded permitted any unit of that force to break with the larger body and function independently to achieve tactical and strategic objectives with little outside support. It was not entirely dissimilar to the design and function of the Farstriders, whose captains in the field frequently possessed more practical power to decide objectives for their individual commands than the ranger-general to whom they all theoretically answered for their actions. It was necessary as the Forsaken alone among the Horde possessed no natural means of reconstituting their numbers -- the living being understandably reluctant to submit to the processes used to create new recruits -- and thus the possibility of losses required minimization of the most radical kind. The Forsaken, as a rule, eschewed stand-and-fight battles in favor of strike-and-run tactics, subversion, espionage, and, not infrequently, assassination. Deathstalker, within the body of the Forsaken military, was the rank applied to their professional assassins and, if the whispers in the halls of the Undercity were to be believed, the left hand of the Dark Lady's own darkest advisor, the dreadlord she kept yoked to her will, the spies and killers of a tamed son of the Burning Legion.

That Lythandros Delaine had done something to earn the attentions of his ruler's most competent professional killers was a matter of not inconsiderable concern. Few things, indeed, earned the sentence of true death within the ranks of the Forsaken. That he had managed to involve himself in the situation by suggesting he was that professional killer was a substantial complication to his relatively straightforward plans -- but now that he had done so, there was no practical method of undoing what he had wrought unawares. Or, at least, none at present -- answers waited in New Agamand and, once he had them, he could decide what to do next.

As he went in search of the bat handlers, the sun finally rose, staining sea and sky and the face of the high cliffs that embraced Vengeance Landing the color of fresh-drawn blood. All things being equal, he hoped that was not an omen of things to come.


End file.
